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Julian Go, Postcolonial Thought and Social Theory, Social Forces, Volume 98, Issue 4, June 2020, Pages 1–3, https://doi.org/10.1093/sf/soaa004
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Extract
There is much that is off-putting about postcolonialism for sociologists. Many of us take it to be a largely humanist and excessively culturalist field, it’s apparent irrelevance to sociology only compounded by the notoriously opaque writing of some of its best-known proponents. The antipathy is &mutual. Seeing sociology as one of Empire’s more pernicious instruments, postcolonial writers largely dismiss our field as incurably positivist and therefore beyond redemption. Into this impasse comes Julian Go’s new treatise, a thought provoking and painstaking attempt to reconcile the apparently irreconcilable. Postcolonial thought and social theory are “not only compatible but mutually necessary,” Go argues that their union can open up a fresh, third wave of postcolonial thought. But engaging with postcolonial thought requires sociology to first confront its own shortcomings—birth defects it has contracted from being born within and at times for Empire. These foundational problems include (1) a penchant for Orientalism (a form of stereotyping) (2) a predilection for “metrocentrism,” or the exclusive reliance on westernized contexts for theorization (3) a tendency towards analytic bifurcation (i.e., severing empire and colony in theories of modernity) and (4) a propensity for repressing the contentions and contributions (i.e., the agency) of subjugated peoples.